On June 1, Ireland was represented at the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) 2026 Conference by a delegation from the University of Galway and IReL. Cillian Joy introduced the work underway at Open Repositories Ireland to build a national infrastructure that will support 100% open access to research publications from 2030.

The delegation brought back valuable insights into international technical and policy developments in areas such as AI, digital sovereignty, new models of research publishing, and multilingualism.

As part of this visit, the University of Galway also began curating Irish repository records for COAR’s International Repositories Directory (IRD), which includes more than 7,000 open repositories worldwide. This work, which formally commenced on 15 June, will help ensure that Irish repositories are accurately represented and more visible internationally. Ultimately, ORI will take ownership of the IRD for Ireland, but under the current NORF project the University of Galway will continue to manage this work until the project concludes at the end of August.

If you would like to ensure that your repository is included in the IRD, please contact bianca.deoliveirapereira@universityofgalway.ie.